A Swiss court ended a painful chapter from World War II Thursday when it cleared the name of a police chief convicted 55 years ago of falsifying documents to rescue up to 3,000 Jews from the Nazis.
Jews saved by Paul Grueninger, who died a broken man at the age of 80 in 1972, hailed the verdict by the St. Gallen district court as a victory over racism and intolerance."The first lesson is not to be racist or judge people by their origin but to judge them instead, as Grueninger did, for what they are," said Harry Weinreb, 74, saved by Grueninger in 1938.
The court president, Werner Baldegger, delivering the verdict in the same courtroom where Grueninger was tried in 1940, said the police chief had acted as an "emergency helper" when he falsified papers to enable Jewish refugees to find sanctuary.
"That's not illegal and therefore he is acquitted," he said.
Grueninger was police chief in the St. Gallen canton, which borders Austria, when neutral Switzerland closed its frontiers on Aug. 19, 1938, to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.
At the same time, the Swiss asked Berlin to stamp the passports of Jews with a "J" to make it easier for border guards to recognize them and turn them back.
Obeying his conscience, Grueninger began to rescue Jews by falsifying records and backdating entry stamps in their papers to mislead federal authorities into thinking they had arrived before the border closure. He was fired in 1939 and a year later convicted of fraud and fined 300 Swiss francs.
The case, which has drawn wide international interest, has come in the same 50th anniversary year after the end of World War II - a year in which the Swiss government has apologized for the first time for its shabby treatment of Jews before and during the war.
The apology was a marked break from a still widespread view of Switzerland as a benign outsider to Europe's bloody 1939-1945 conflict.
That view has also been tarnished by claims by world Jewish groups that Swiss banks still hold the accounts of Holocaust victims despite efforts by their heirs to find lost money.
The publicity has prompted Swiss banks to sweep their books, turning up nearly $35 million that may have been left by murdered Jews.
"There's been a change of spirit in Switzerland. That helped to get the Grueninger sentence overturned," said Erich Billig, 71, an Austrian-born Jew saved by Grueninger.
The verdict came three days after a quick 75-minute retrial that took place after long years of campaigning by Grueninger's daughter, Ruth Roduner, and her three sons and local supporters.
Grueninger never found regular work again after his firing, drifting from job to job. He was awarded the Medal of the Just by Israel's Yad Vashem foundation in 1971, but died a year later still unrecognized by his own country.